Chapter 4 - THE HOSPITAL WENT DARK
The drive back to Chicago became a blur of red lights, police radios, and terror.
I called Lucia six times.
No answer.
The nursing station answered on the seventh call.
“She’s sleeping, Ms. Martinez.”
“Go look at her.”
“Excuse me?”
“Please. Right now.”
The nurse hesitated.
I screamed.
“GO LOOK AT MY SISTER!”
Thirty seconds later, the line went silent.
Then the nurse returned.
“She’s here. She’s asleep.”
My entire body collapsed against the passenger seat.
But Santos wasn’t relieved.
“They wanted us to panic.”
Adrian stared through the windshield.
“Or they wanted us to know they can reach her.”
Karen was taken into protective custody.
Dante voluntarily handed over his access card, phone, and weapon to Santos.
By sunrise, technicians confirmed his key card had been cloned.
Dante was furious.
Adrian was worse.
The betrayal had come from inside his house.
Someone knew the camera system.
The staff schedule.
Emma’s sleeping routine.
Even my trash route.
That last detail bothered me most.
“How did they know I’d go outside?”
I asked Adrian while we stood in an empty hospital conference room.
“They may not have.”
“But Karen accused me immediately.”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t hesitate.”
Adrian’s face hardened.
“She had been instructed to blame whoever found Emma.”
I stared at him.
“So I was just unlucky.”
“No.”
“What?”
“You were expendable.”
I hated how calmly he said it.
Maybe because he was right.
I had cleaned the Valente estate for eleven months.
I entered through the staff door.
I scrubbed floors no guest ever noticed.
I emptied bins.
Changed linens.
Removed fingerprints from glass.
People spoke around me as though I were furniture.
Nobody imagined the cleaning woman would matter.
That was why Karen’s story had worked.
Until it didn’t.
Santos entered carrying a tablet.
“We traced some of Rhodes’s payments.”
Adrian straightened.
“To whom?”
“Not who. Where.”
She turned the screen.
A company called North Meridian Trust had transferred money through five shell companies.
The final recipient controlled seven percent of Valente Holdings.
Adrian’s face turned cold.
“Victor.”
“Victor who?” I asked.
“My uncle.”
I knew the name.
Victor Valente was sixty-one, polished, philanthropic, and frequently photographed beside governors, bishops, and hospital executives.
He was also chairman of Valente Holdings.
Adrian’s father’s younger brother.
“Why would he want Emma dead?”
Adrian looked toward the hospital windows.
For a moment, he seemed older.
“When Elena died, her thirty-one percent interest in Valente Holdings went into a trust for Emma.”
“And?”
“If Emma reaches her first birthday, those shares become permanently locked in trust until she’s twenty-five. I control the voting proxy.”
“If she doesn’t?”
Adrian looked at me.
“They revert to the last surviving beneficiary named in my father’s original trust.”
“Victor.”
“Yes.”
My stomach twisted.
Emma was seven months old.
Five months away from making Victor permanently powerless.
A baby almost died because a grown man wanted stock certificates.
“What kind of family does that?”
Adrian gave a humorless smile.
“Mine.”
A nurse entered.
“Ms. Martinez? Dr. Rhodes wants to speak with you.”
Santos’s eyebrows lifted.
“He’s still here?”
“Apparently hospital counsel hasn’t formally removed him from all patient contact.”
I stood.
“No.”
Then I changed my mind.
“I want to hear what he says.”
Rhodes waited inside Lucia’s room.
That immediately made me angry.
“Get away from her.”
He raised his hands.
“I came to help.”
“By secretly labeling her a Valente contingency?”
Rhodes glanced toward Santos.
“I explained that.”
“You lied.”
His calm expression cracked.
“Your sister is very sick.”
“I know.”
“If we delay surgery, she may not have another opportunity.”
“You’re not touching her.”
“Then she could die.”
My throat closed.
Rhodes stepped closer.
“Isabella, whatever you think you discovered has nothing to do with Lucia’s care.”
“Then why were you meeting Karen?”
His eyes flickered.
“One of her relatives was a patient.”
“Lie better.”
Adrian moved between us.
Rhodes immediately backed away.
Adrian’s voice was quiet.
“If Lucia dies because you withheld treatment—”
Santos interrupted.
“Don’t finish that sentence.”
Adrian looked at her.
“Good advice.”
Rhodes started toward the door.
Lucia suddenly spoke.
“Isa.”
I rushed to her.
“What?”
Her hand felt cold.
Too cold.
Her eyelids fluttered.
“I feel weird.”
The monitor began beeping.
Rhodes turned.
“She’s crashing.”
He moved toward the IV.
I slapped his hand away.
“Don’t touch it!”
Nurses rushed in.
A different cardiologist appeared.
Someone yelled for medication.
Then every light in the room went out.
Darkness.
The emergency generator should have activated immediately.
It didn’t.
People shouted in the hallway.
Phones lit up.
Lucia’s monitor died.
“Lucia!”
I grabbed her hand.
Someone grabbed me from behind.
I screamed.
“Isabella, it’s me.”
Adrian.
“Stay beside me.”
A crash came from the hallway.
Then a gunshot.
Somebody screamed.
Emergency lights flashed on red.
Lucia’s bed was empty.
For one impossible second, I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
Then I saw the IV tubing dangling over the mattress.
The window curtains moving.
The service door open.
“No.”
I ran.
“LUCIA!”
Adrian caught up.
Dante appeared from the stairwell.
“Security camera feed is down.”
“Lock the building,” Adrian ordered.
Santos was already shouting into her radio.
I ran barefoot down the corridor because one of my shoes had fallen off somewhere behind me.
At the elevator, a nurse lay against the wall holding her bleeding forehead.
“Where did they take her?”
The nurse pointed.
“Service elevator.”
We took the stairs.
Seven floors.
My lungs burned.
On the third floor, Adrian caught my arm.
“Listen.”
A faint metal squeal came from behind a locked door marked RESEARCH ACCESS — CLOSED.
Dante kicked it open.
Dark hallway.
Abandoned offices.
Plastic sheeting.
Then I heard a familiar cough.
Lucia.
I ran toward it.
“Isa!”
She was in a wheelchair at the end of the corridor.
A man wearing hospital scrubs stood behind her.
His face was covered.
He held a syringe near her neck.
“Stop.”
Adrian’s voice changed.
It became the voice Chicago feared.
The man froze.
“Let her go.”
The masked man laughed nervously.
“You take another step and she gets the entire syringe.”
I looked at Lucia.
Terrified.
Weak.
My little sister, who had never hurt anyone.
I lifted my hands.
“Take me instead.”
“Isabella, no,” Lucia whispered.
The man looked at me.
“That wasn’t the instruction.”
“What was?”
He smiled behind the mask.
“To make sure you understood the price of interfering with Victor Valente.”
Adrian went completely still.
May you like
And that was the moment the masked man realized he had said the one name he had never been supposed to say.
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